Houma power plant ready for emergency

Wednesday

Jan 29, 2014 at 10:01 PM

The decades-old power plant sits dark and cold on the corner of Barrow Street and La. 311 most days.

Mary KilpatrickStaff Writer

The decades-old power plant sits dark and cold on the corner of Barrow Street and La. 311 most days.But when extreme weather hits Terrebonne Parish like it did this week and the electric grid is at risk, local officials fire it up.The plant's been around since 1927 but is rarely used. Each of the generators takes up to eight hours to heat up to capacity.“The plant historically has run during peak season, winter or summer,” Terrebonne Utilities Manager Tom Bourg said.When temperatures dipped below freezing Tuesday night, parish officials started it up and put it on standby, just in case of an emergency.Terrebonne did not report any large-scale outages during the winter storm.If the power grid had gone down, the plant would start producing energy for the parish. “The biggest concern was the remote possibility of a blackout,” he said.Temperatures for Tuesday in Houma and Thibodaux ranged from a high of 48 degrees to a low of 28, the National Weather Service said. Wednesday's high reached 38 and the low fell to 26, with the wind chill making it feel like 18.The small chance of the storm shutting down the power grid fueled the parish's decision.It's a rare occurrence, but the parish wanted to be prepared, Bourg said.

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